modern day [Ninja] Gaiden sequels". ScrewAttack listed the game as the seventh hardest title in the NES library. Over fifteen years after its creation, Ninja Gaiden has maintained its position as one of the most popular games for the NES. A 2006 Joystiq reader poll, with over 12,000 votes, listed the game at No. 10 on a list of top NES games. Another reader poll from GameSpot listed the game at No. 10 in its top 10 NES games list. It was No. 17 on IGN's Top 100 NES Games list. In August 2001 in its 100th issue, Game Informer listed the game at No. 93 in their Top 100 Games of All Time list. In 2006 Electronic Gaming Monthly featured a follow-up to their The 200 Greatest Videogames of Their Time, where readers wrote in and discussed games they felt were ignored on the list; the game was listed at No. 16 of the top 25 games discussed. At the end of 2005, Nintendo Power ran a serial feature titled The Top 200 Nintendo Games Ever. The list, which included games for all Nintendo systems, placed the game at No. 89. In August 2008, the same magazine ranked it the tenth best NES game of all time; they praised the gameplay and described the cinematic cutscenes as revolutionary for its time. The game's music received honorable mention on IGN's list of Best 8-Bit Soundtracks. IGN featured its introduction on its Top 100 Video Game Moments list at #53; it was also listed as the second best video game cutscene of all time in Complex magazine. Nintendo Power honored the game in its November 2010 issue, which celebrated the 25th anniversary of the NES. The magazine listed its box art, which depicts a ninja with a burning city in the background, as one of its favorite designs in the NES library. The magazine's Editor-in-Chief Chris Slate was equally impressed by the game's box art. He also reminisced about the game's high level of difficulty with its re-spawning enemies and enemy birds that knocked players into pits, saying this game "may have taught me how to curse". He further praised gameplay features such as clinging on walls and using ninpo techniques, and he noted the game's cinematic cutscenes, including the ominous opening sequence that featured two ninjas who launch into the air at each other clashing their swords in the moonlight.